Skandia: ”Castles Built on Sand” Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

IMD-1-0224 © 2005
Hamilton, Stewart; Lindblom, Anna

In the end of the 1990s Skandia transformed itself from a "flat" traditional insurance carrier to an alluring fund management business. Sailing on the stock exchange boom fuelled by the Web, Skandia's share price had achieved a high of SKr 231 in the month of June 2000. Three years successively, the share price had dived 93% to SKr 16.

The narrative that unfolds on two continents is an investment model, and about the astounding stock price roller coaster; about envy and boardroom disputes, executive perks, accounting methods and dubious finance. Skandia burned and crashed, but endured. However, the narrative would be called the biggest scandal in Swedish industrial history. 

Skandia Castles Built on Sand case study solution

Subjects: Insurance; Corporate Governance; Executive Remuneration; Accounting; Auditors; Board of Directors
Settings: Sweden; USA; Insurance; SKr 198 billion revenues in 2000; 5800 employees in 20 countries; 1999-2003

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